Today is Blue Knot Day

Hi @BlueBay, I hear you... though at present I am struggling with the "hope" bit.

There are so many sad stories of childhood trauma and dysfunctional families. I often think it is a pity there are not more resources going into helping vulnerable children and families who are at risk. In my mind if support was given so that the harm to children was minimised somehow, there would be a lot less adults struggling with MI.

I also think that some in the medical profession need to have a long, hard look at the way they view childhood trauma. 14 years ago I spent some time in a psychiatric hospital suffering major depression. I had nightmares, flashbacks and never ending voices in my head yelling obscenities at me (reminding me I was a stupid waste of breathing space etc). When I tried to explain to the psychiatrist that I thought I was struggling because I had no peace from the tirade and was haunted by my childhood, he told me that I would still be struggling regardless of my experiences due to my personality (anxious, introvert) He was right in the sense that we have a predisposition to being susceptible to MI. My frustration was that he was not at all interested in my past which in my mind was causing me a lot of grief in the present. I still (irrationally) looked over my shoulder just in case my brother was there (he was dead.... I don't believe in ghosts!!) I was paranoid around males. The list goes on. I had ECT...it worked eventually because it got rid of my Father and brothers voice yelling at me constantly.

Earlier this year when my daughter was in a psychiatric hospital, I was trying to get information about her treatment and how we could help her. Because she was 22 she was an adult and I was shut out of her care. She refused to put me on her list of people who could be included. When I finally convinced them to let me know what was going on, I went to a scheduled meeting, which I thought was to help plan a way forward. Instead I was blindsided. Nothing was discussed about ways I could help my daughter, or about her treatment. Instead her Psychiatrist asked me if I was aware of the effect my illness had on her when she was growing up? How rejected my daughter had felt when I was ill in hospital. With my daughter sitting in silence, the Psych continued to list all the things I was responsible for.

I had apologised to my daughter on numerous occasions about her feelings of rejection etc. I had not been so unwell for years and I tried so hard to be at her beck and call and 'make up' for my failings. I cried all the way home. I don't see how blaming me for her struggles helped her to move forward. Clearly her Psych thought rehashing things my daughter and I had previously dealt with was useful.

So one Psych was not at all interestedd in childhood trauma while the other used it to vilify and cause unwarranted division. While under this Psychiatrists 'care' my daughter grew increasingly hostile towards me (for no apparent reason). I think she was TOO focused on childhood trauma.

Sorry I have ended up doing a rant....oooops...

Hi @BlueBay

Thank you for your heartfelt expression of your experience and how incredibly painful that level of rejection from family. Unfortunately, I understand that all too well. How incredibly brave you were to tell them and their reaction is so much about how they 'dont deal with things'. I so very sorry to hear you experienced that level of trauma as a child and I understand the lifelong daily affects and ramifications. It is good you can share here how you really think and feel and hope it brings some relief. It would be extremely helpful if your loved ones could offer you love and physical comfort and I think we never stop hoping that that may eventuate. Unfortunately, in my situtaion, they are simply not capable of it and it has been an extremely painful experience coming to terms with it. You sound like you are have parented very differently and your children have the benefit of your loving sensitivity. On the other hand you are having to live with the secrets and daily struggles and it is such a big burden. It seems such a simple concept, people could surround us, give to us by being kind and showing love and which would nurse us back to health and yet they dont. I dont fully understand the behaviour, it feels so cruel and unnecessary. I know I am new to this forum but as a fellow abuse survivor my heart and kindness go out to you and I hope my post brings some sense of comfort.

Much kindness to you @BlueBay

Hi @BlueBay

I too only just saw this thread and didnt know about blue knot day.

My story is all too familar as well, I too was never heard as a child when I tried to reach out and then later blamed of rthe abuse I endured.

People need a licence to have animals maybe they should have a licence to have kids.!

This is why I dont have kids, I had such a horrible childhood I didnt want to have kids becuase I didnt want to inflict the same thing and I also knew for some reason before I was diagnosed that children were not for me. Furbabies instead.

Dear EveryOne who is wonderful, resilient, surviving, loving....

@BlueBay @Former-Member @PurpleFlowers @Change123 @Misty1

Blue Knot Day... there are so many 'days' and weeks and international year of the..... xx issue here.

I too had not ever heard of blue knot day.

I have heard your lived experience story before @BlueBay - and it always makes me tear up, so sad. When I first told my Mum, she slapped me across the face and told me to stop lying. That was a regular feature of my childhood being slapped for 'lying' - I was a very creative thinker and fantasist - my inner life was so much nicer than what was really heppeneing to me, but as a little kid I didn't have the 'executive function' to know one didn't tell one's fantasy stories out loud.

My family was spectaculalry VICTORIAN in nature - Mum raised by a mother in the Edwardian period, but raising her children as the Victorian period (The Queen Victoria period not the State) dictated. Australia was (and still is in some places) quite old fashioned, never catching up with modern thought and action. So I was taught to hate myself and my own body and if I mentioned a body part that was on the prohibited list I was spanked or slapped depending how well my Mother was travelling on any given day.

@BlueBay - I am SO sorry your parents were not capable of supporting you. Their rejection of the truth and their rejection of you is all about THEM, not about you at all on any level. It is hard to see that for ourselves though. These people who are "supposed'' to love us, cherish us, protect us and don't. It glares out to me that your mother in particular could NOT cope on any level with what you told her so just rejected the reality and you along with it. And your Dad went along with that and your siblings - the dynamics of family often has people lining up with ONE person to protect themselves against the same rejection. The coming up to Christmas time post you wrote waves a huge flag about your desparate sense of rejection and wanting it to be some other way.

How do we accept and come to terms with what happened to us? How do we accept the unacceptable - we don't - we do not have to ACCEPT or embrace abuse - we can stand strong in a clarity that what hapepned to us was wrong, filthy, criminal, hurtful, and if our families when told could not cope - that is THEIR story, they couldn't cope. We can ACCEPT or reconcile that terrible things happen to us. Look how many Sane Forumites are survivors of childhood abuse (not only sexual but physical and emotional too) and here we are sruggling with our lives.

@Misty1 your own daughters and family you have tried so hard to do it differently to do it well, and it is gutwrenching to hear the details of the situation with your daughter when she was in hospital. We ALL reengineer our stories trying to make sense of them, we can be very vulnerbale to manipulation by Psych professionals who want a story to work out in a particualr way to fit what they have learned. Maybe that Psych that took your daughter through the litancy of disspaointments with you really thought that having done that your daughter may get on with life and get some equilibrium back. We are all an experiment when it comes to what works, and we are all vulenerable to scripts and tapes others may write for us if we are despearate to be well

It is VERY hard to move on from rejection the very nature of it means the VOID can never be filled, our minds rejject utterly how it really is and cling despartely to how we wish it was - and that is not healing.

We are all re-engineering our own stories in hindsight as we get more information trying to fit the jigsaw puzzle together to show the picture of "Who am I really?" and "How did I become like this?". We do need to be careful to not write such a strong immutable script for ourselves that we cannot change it and move ito a sense of more peace. We cannot change other people at all - we cannot influence other people if they will no longer accept us into their circle of influence. All that can be done at that point is to write our own story NOW and for tommorrow... Letting go of people who hurt us and abused us and whom we hold in our own heads re-tormenting ourselves with their unaccaptable actions - this makes us crazy - letting go of people who have already abandoned us feels like a double betrayal, but is in the end the only sensible, sane and self-loving thing to do.

How much time and effort do we spend in our own minds replaying the story, the grievance the hurt? How much time do we spend trying to jump that track, open to a new way of being, letting go of what harmed and hurt and harrowed us... It is perfectly permissibile to abandon old thoughts, old feeelings and old grievences.

We CAN give ourselves permission to change our minds about how we view something.

Regret and rejection often end up INSIDE of us as RESENTMENT - and resentment is like acid it eats us inside out. Only we can let go, only we can let go.

We never find new vistas if the row boat we are in is chained to a familiar shore.

Blue Knot day? Undo the Knot. Cut the cord. Open the fists. Back to the wind. Sail on.

The rest of our lives are waiting for us to stop living in the past.

Oh, that's awful @Former-Member, blaming you. Yes, it is certainly part of the trauma. It's a time to receive support and love not blame. Hugs to you. xo